Chrono Cross (1999)

I completely missed this game when it came out, which was weird because Chrono Trigger and the Final Fantasy series are among my best games of all time. I first found out about the game sometime in the early 2000s from listening to video game online radio, where I was like "holy shit, what game is this music from? I have to play it!". It has been high on my wishlist since. I did look for a copy online and even found one in a local store but they are competing with the pirate's discount. I signed up for notifications for the playstation store and the day before my birthday 2019 the game went on sale. I got it as a birthday present for myself for a comfortable $6. Totally worth it for such a masterpiece.

My team for the 1st part of the game was Kid and Pierre. I missed quite a few characters and eventually decided that Pierre sucks. I kept using him though because I had invested in an iron sword, he was the 2nd character to join and thus had a lot of stat gains, and being blue he could use the frog summon. I accidentally put Kid in the lead but it worked out well because I had her steal every battle. My strategy was to have each character spend 6 stamina on attacks (usually 1 of each type) and then use an element. Rarely used defend and never bothered with consumables. Sometimes I had to let up on doing the full attack chain to get a heal off.

For the 2nd part of the game my party was Harle and Radius. Other than Sprigg (I did not want to use her) they were the 1st to join. I booted Radius for Norris for story reasons, and because he was a brittle old man. I liked Harle's magic protection but this was the part of the game where I had the most trouble with 3 bosses in a row. 2 of them were white innate and those did not go so well with 2 blacks in the party. For Garai I had to flee and use items to heal up to try again. Had to let Harle get off her magic protection ASAP. I had to flee from the black robot because its darkness dragged out the battle too long. Put on a couple eagle eyes and try again. I actually got a game over on Miguel and had to change up my strategy. I think this is when I started using diminish because there is not much else to do when characters are getting one shotted.

For the rest of the game my overall strategy was to use diminish early on, pile debuffs on the boss, use strengthen on each and wreck the boss with physical attacks. Each party member had a variety of elements of every color, including nukes, heals and debuffs. After Harle left I used Irenes for a while because she was blue. Never got a chance to use my only summon again though and she was not a great character. I booted her when Lord Viper joined because I had his special sword. I got the Mastermune but missed the Chrono Cross. Replaced Norris with Kid and beat the game. Serge's attacks were insane and the entire end game was easy. I was able to make 2 prismatic mails, which were given to Serge and Viper. Kid got a defender plus to make up for it. Everyone had stone helms and attack boosting accessories like power seals and dragoon honor. After getting the bad ending I read a walkthrough to see what I missed. Not too much. It was a simple thing to get the Chrono Cross and get the good ending.

I overall loved the game. The world, the story, the characters. The nostalgia of the music and references to the previous 2 games. The innovative mechanics that clearly make the game a Jrpg but not the same as most others. My only complaint is that it is tedious to assign elements, which made me not want to fiddle with the grids much. So no trying to optimize for specific bosses with more counter elements or other characters. Despite the huge cast I never wanted to use anyone else because I did not want to set up their grids. I did try the auto fill feature but it sucks. I also felt that the story in the end game was running out of steam and going off the rails a little bit. I wish the ending showed what happened to the important characters.

I will play again new game + at some point in the future when the story is no longer fresh.